BioShock: Rapture

Gorland knew this trail could lead him to trouble, maybe jail. But he was a restless man, unhappy if he wasn’t out on an edge. He either stayed busy working the game or lost himself in a woman’s arms. Otherwise he started thinking too much. Like about his old man dumping him in that orphanage when he was a boy.

The deckhand turned the corner of one of the loading docks to go up the access road. It was a foggy night, and there was no one else on the short side road to the avenue. No one to see…

Frank Gorland had two approaches to getting what he wanted from life. Long-term planning—and creative improvisation. He saw a possibility—a foot-long piece of one-inch-diameter metal pipe, fallen off some truck. It was just lying in the gutter, calling to him. He scooped up the piece of pipe and hurried to catch up with the slouching shape of the deckhand.

He stepped up behind the man, grabbed his collar, jerked him slightly off balance without knocking him over.

“Hey!” the man yelped.

Gorland held the deckhand firmly in place and pressed the end of the cold metal pipe to the back of his neck. “Freeze!” Gorland growled, altering his voice. He put steel and officiousness into it. “You turn around, mister, you try to run, and I’ll pull the trigger and separate your backbones with a bullet!”

The man froze. “Don’t—don’t shoot! What do you want? I don’t have but a dollar on me!”

“You think I’m some crooked dock rat? I’m a federal agent! Now don’t even twitch!”

Gorland let go of the deckhand’s collar, reached into his own coat pocket, took out his wallet, flipped it open, flashed the worthless special-officer badge he used when he needed bogus authority. He flicked it in front of the guy’s face, not letting him have a real look at it.

“You see that?” Gorland demanded.

“Yes sir!”

He put the wallet away and went on, “Now hear this, sailor: you’re in deep shit, for working on that crooked project of Ryan’s!”

“They—they told me it was legal! All legal!”

“They told you it was a secret too, right? You think it’s legal to keep secrets from Uncle Sam?”

“No—I guess not. I mean—Well I don’t know nothing about it. Just that they’re building something out there. And it’s a dangerous job, down them tunnels under the sea.”

“Tunnels? Under the sea? For what?”

“For the construction. The foundations! I don’t know why he’s doing it. None of the men do—he tells ’em only what they need to know. Only, I heard Greavy talking to one of them scientist types! All I can tell you is what I heard…”

“And that was—?”

“That Ryan is building a city under the sea down there!”

“A what!”

“Like, a colony under the goddamn ocean! And they’re laying out all kindsa stuff down there! It don’t seem possible, but he’s doing it! I heard he’s spending hunnerds of millions, might be getting into billions! He’s spending more money than any man ever spent buildin’ anything!”

Gorland’s mouth went dry as he contemplated it, and his heart thumped.

“Where is this thing?”

“Out in the North Atlantic—they keep us belowdecks when we go, so we don’t see where exactly. I ain’t even sure! Cold as death out there, it is! But he’s got the devil’s own heat coming up—steam comes up someways, and sulfur fumes, and the like! Some took sick from them fumes! Men have died down there, buildin’ that thing!”

“How do you know how much he’s spending?”

“I was carryin’ bags into Mr. Greavy’s office, on the platform ship, and I was curious, like. I hears ’em talkin’…”

“The what kind of ship?”

“That’s what they call it. Platform ship! A platform to launch their slinkers! The Olympian there, it supplies the platform ships!”

“Slinkers, that what you said?”

“Bathyspheres, they is!”

“Bathyspheres! If you’re lying to me…”

“No officer, I swear it!”

“Then get out of here! Run! And tell no one you spoke to me—or you go right to jail!”

The man went scurrying away, and Gorland was left in a state of mute amazement.

Ryan is building a city under the sea.

3

Ryan Building, New York City 1946

Ten A.M. and Bill McDonagh wanted a cigarette. He had a pack of smokes calling to him from his jacket pocket, but he held off. He was right bloody nervous about this meeting with Andrew Ryan. He was sitting literally on the edge of the padded velvet waiting-room chair outside the door of Ryan’s office trying to relax, his report on the tunnel in a big brown envelope on his lap.